JourneyEtc

At least three passengers are dead, more than 14 people are wounded, and around 50 people are still unaccounted for as the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground a sandbar resulting it to keel over near Giglio in Italy last Friday night. The ship had more than 4,000 passengers.

Initial reports say that the evacuation was a story of panic where a lot of passengers cannot get onto lifeboats, decided to return to their room, while others jumped into the water and swam to reach the shore.

According to authorities the captain of the cruise ship is already under arrest for man slaughter and abandoning ship. Coast guard and other rescue teams are searching the waters for possible survivors while divers were sent to check the submerged decks of the ship.

Majority of the 3,200 passengers were Italian, French, British, and German nationals. The number of crew was about 1,000.

Salvage teams are still working on how they can pump out the oil from a cargo ship Rena that cracked off the coast of the northern Island of New Zealand. The weather so far has been favorable but the listing sea vessel exposes the crew to very dangerous situations. There is a high risk that the ship can break up with the cracked hull.

As of this reporting, more than 300 tons of fuel have spilled from the Liberian flagged and Greek owned ship and have polluted many kilometers of nearby coastline.

The same crew has sucked out 10 tons of oil from the ship last week but had to temporarily stop operations after the weather went bad.